Soviet Decisionmaking For National Security

This book, first published in 1984, analyses the critically important Cold War issue of the Soviet national security decision-making process dealing with weapons acquisition, arms control and the application of military force. It conceptualises Soviet decision-making for national security from Stalinist antecedents to 1980s modes, and examines the problems of decision-making concerning weapons development, defence research and development and SALT negotiations. It also focuses on the decision-making processes which led to the use or threatened use of military force in Czechoslovakia (1968), the Middle East (1973) and Afghanistan (1979).

This study deals with three cases where the regional security aspect of Soviet decision-making was important. Firstly, the Baltic region will be considered. The Soviet strategy for promoting stability in the Baltic republics has been that of integration. The three republics have become politically and economically firmly integrated with the rest of the Soviet Union. Secondly, Soviet Central Asia will be analyzed. Here, the Soviet leaders decided that an intervention of Afghanistan would be the best measure to counteract alleged foreign influence. The third case deals with Soviet-Polish relations. During the Polish crisis of 1980-81 there was a definite possibility of the Soviet military invasion. One motive for an intervention would have been the destabilizing effects of the Western parts of the USSR that the Polish development had. However, another strategy was chosen, a strategy of non-intervention, namely that of martial law. The concerns for regional security could be studied both at the central and regional level. The republic level first party secretaries who supervise the political stability of their regions constitute an especially interesting source when studying the regional component in the Soviet decision-making. During the Brezhnev period the regional party secretaries became far more active in foreign policy matters than earlier. This fact has largely been overlooked in Western research on the Soviet Union.

This report examines the Soviet political-military mechanisms used in the Gorbachev era for national security decisionmaking and explains how the struggle over control of those mechanisms contributed to the events that led to the failed August 1991 coup. The report argues that during the months leading up to the August coup, the leaders of the military-industrial complex discovered that the centrifugal process in the USSR steadily whittled away at their traditional ability to use central institutions to carry out unilateral decisions affecting the republics, and that a prominent motive for the coup was the hope of halting that process by preventing the imminent signing of a union treaty that would formalize a vast further reduction in the degree of influence those leaders enjoyed. The critical issue of the ideological leanings of the actors involved in whatever new supreme institutions for national security coordinating and decisionmaking eventually reemerge in Russia was underscored in the spring of 1992 by disturbing signs that Yeltsin was coming under increasing pressure to make concessions to the traditionally dominant forces in the military institution.

The Soviet experience in Afghanistan provides a compelling perspective on the far-reaching hazards of military intervention. In 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev decided that a withdrawal from Afghanistan should occur as soon as possible. The Soviet Union's senior leadership had become aware that their strategy was unraveling, their operational and tactical methods were not working, and the sacrifices they were demanding from the Soviet people and military were unlikely to produce the forecasted results. Despite this state of affairs, operations in Afghanistan persisted and four more years passed before the Soviets finally withdrew their military forces. In No Miracles, Michael Fenzel explains why and how that happened, as viewed from the center of the Soviet state. From that perspective, three sources of failure stand out: poor civil-military relations, repeated and rapid turnover of Soviet leadership, and the perception that Soviet global prestige and influence were inexorably tied to the success of the Afghan mission. Fenzel enumerates the series of misperceptions and misjudgments that led to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, tracing the hazards of their military intervention and occupation. Ultimately, he offers a cautionary tale to nation states and policymakers considering military intervention and the use of force.

This volume contains the proceedings of a conference sponsored by the International Security Studies Program of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in 1983. Combining historical and contemporary perspectives, the contributors discuss both current and historical national security in Russia, Britain, the U.S., and the West in general. Topics include: Allied decisions in World War II and defense planning in NATO; decisionmaking in the executive branch and in Congress; non-governmental considerations such as the media and government-industry relations; and policy implications. For sale in India at Rs. 70.00.